CAD Skills assessment (or CAD Testing) is clearly a subject where opinions are often divided – you either believe in it or dismiss it as being too blunt an instrument to have any real merit. I thought I would share with you some of the opinions from a discussion forum where the original post was asking if anyone had used CAD Tests to assess potential job candidates.

The post had attracted a lot of responses - which I found interesting considering the simple nature of the question. But there were some very strong opinions as to the usefulness, or not, of testing as part of the interview process.

Reading the threads, there were points made, supporting both sides of the debate. Those against made the point that the critical thing is to ensure that the potential candidate has the relevant industry experience, as any required CAD skills can easily be taught. Those against also mentioned that so many CAD tests were too generic, and lacking the ability to test the specific ways in which their own company used the design systems. Most of these comments were made by the CAD managers and those hiring. Anecdotal experience also came from those being hired and taking tests, where a common theme was that it was hard taking a test without their usual customisations and shortcuts being available.

Some contributors made the point that any such testing should allow the use of reference materials, etc, as this would always be available in the working environment. The point being that good users are not just good at using the CAD, but are good at quickly finding the answers when they get stuck – a pretty valid point I guess.

But there were also those very much for testing as part of an interview process, both from an employer and employee perspective. The employee side of the argument was mostly from those that landed a job having done well in a test – for them, there was some sense of them being valued for their ability to use the tools of their trade. Equally there were posts from the employers using CAD testing to help assess new staff, where it was a quick way to spot those who were clearly useless and taking a flyer on being able to bluff the interview process.

I guess that whatever the argument, the important point is to understand the difference between “Testing” and “Assessment” the point being that testing is often a black or white, pass/fail situation, whereas the assessment process takes a more balanced view, looking at many potential factors. Use Skills Testing as just one part of your overall toolkit in order to find out more about an employee (or potential employee) Use it in conjunction with interviews, reviews, whatever your staff assessment process normally is. In this way you ensure that a balanced assessment is made, and your chances of making the right choices and decisions about people should certainly be improved.

Excitech’s HQ, the Design Technology Centre, is now on Google Earth in 3D, using a mixture of photography and visualisation.

How we achieved this and the tools which we used may be of value to you as you seek to increase the profile of your organisation and its design projects as well as communicate your design intent to project partners, clients and maybe even planners.

Imagine building a 3D model of your company or better yet your own home and then having the ability to post this 3D model to Google Earth for the entire world to see. This service is available through Google Earth and SketchUp. This blog entry will step through the process I followed to create a 3D Textured model of Excitech Ltd.  which was then added to the Google Earth Layer for everyone to see.

Image 1  -  Excitech Ltd. offices inside the Design Technology Centre found in Google Earth (just search for “Excitech”)

How it was achieved:

I started my project and used Google SketchUp to model the building based on photographs taken from our company (Design Technology Centre) I did not have a great camera so I decided to involve my training manager to see if he could capture some shots of our building for me to use.  The process followed is called “Photo Matching”. This technique requires a couple of images of existing buildings.  Sketchup has the ability to match the perspective view from your  photos and you simply model over it. Similar to tracing on a piece of paper, except your end result being a 3D model  (see Image 2 of a typical example) Alternatively you could use rendered images of your building if you have modelled it up in other software applications such as AutoCAD, 3DS MAX and Revit to mention a few. Photo matching is a great way to quickly model surroundings without having to get too caught up with the aesthetics or overcomplicating the process.

Now it gets a little more interesting, I took the photographs and started using Gimp to edit out all the vehicles that was parked in front of our building that blocked my view of the windows, on the day the photos were taken. I soon realised that my photo editing techniques were a bit rusty and decided to call in the 3DS Max expert from our Consultancy department. He had previously created our building in 3D with allot more detail than I had expected but the part I was interested in was the Rendered images he produced inside 3DS MAX. I Imported these rendered images as Textures for my 3D model as seen in Image 1. You will notice how I used the satellite imagery for the roof texture to make the terrain blend a little more seamlessly, when viewed in Google Earth.

Image 2  - Typical Matched Photo used to create a 3D model from

Loading the model to the Google Earth Layer was the next step. This “Layer” I refer to is controlled by Google and you can add to this layer in a number of different ways. Allot of Non Profit organisations use this Layer and I have recently seen some content posted that covers the Haiti Earthquake devastation, but that’s another discussion all together. Back to the project, inside Google SketchUp you have the ability to import Geographically referenced satellite images from Google Earth. Let me explain this a little further. Lets imagine you download Google Earth (Free of Pro Version) you type your postal address in the Google Earth search bar. Google Earth flies to your address and shows you a plan view satellite image of your site.  You then download Google SketchUp and press the “Get current view” icon form the available toolbars  This automatically imports the geographically referenced satellite image from Google Earth into SketchUP as well as the terrain data. So if you live on a mountain you will see a mountain in SketchUp after importing your view. It’s that easy! Use this Satellite image as the base for your model. Trace over your building outlines, draw a couple of shapes and before you know it you have a 3D model ready to upload. It’s that simple! Now all you do is click the “Share models” icon from the available toolbars, to load your model to the 3D Warehouse, which is a free online storage location for users to access and share 3D models. (see http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/)

You first need to sign in using your GMAIL account, if you do not have an account create a GMAIL account  and create a user profile, then start the review process. There are a couple of things you should be aware of though.

Google reviews every model that is placed on the Google Earth Layer to verify the building exist in the real world. So you will need to meet some criteria which are all covered in my Geo-modelling training course. I share tips on getting your model grounded which is absolutely essential and also ways to improve your models file size as there are some restrictions to file size. Excitech is an Authorized Training Centre of Google Sketchup and Google Earth so I suggest you find out which courses are available and start to leave your digital footprint on the Virtual Planet called Google Earth. The review procedure takes roughly 7 working days and you will be awarded a Blue Ribbon status for you model when accepted by the 3D Warehouse team. (See image 3 for a view of the 3D Warehouse Blue Ribbon status) As you start to create these 3D models people will start to recognise your work through the on line profile you created and may start to use your buildings as entourage in projects they are busy with. I can honestly say that you will find almost anything imaginable under the sun inside the 3D warehouse and is a great online resource for things like trees, buildings, people, vehicles etc.

Image 3 - Blue Ribbon status verified for 3D Model

Some other features that you will find very useful is marketing yourself in Google Earth, so to help with this you will notice when you hover over the 3D building inside Google Earth it highlights blue. When you left  click on it a “Pop up Balloon” appears. This Balloon can be populated with specific information about your organization as well  as contact details and many other key features. If you are using the Google Earth Plug-in inside your company website you can use HTML, You tube videos, Images and many other great features inside these customizable “Pop up balloons” but that is a whole other chapter waiting to be discussed.

Feel free to visit our company website to take advantage of our Google Accredited Training courses by simply following this link: Google Earth Story - http://www.excitech.co.uk/news/geomodelling_with_google_earth.asp then simply click on the Sketchup and Google Earth training courses tab to find out more about each course.

I had an interesting conversation whilst with a client about how untidy the Revit browser can get, especially when you are creating multiple section and elevation views that merely help with the creation of the model. You may have no intension of using these views on drawing sheets and they often clutter the browser.

One simple way of achieving a tidier, more efficient browser is to create different types of section and elevation views. Select an elevation or section mark and then choose type properties.

You can then duplicate the type and give this a meaningful name. When you create a new section the section will then appear in the browser as follows. Notice that the type name is in brackets.

Another very useful thing to do is create different family types for your section heads so you can instantly recognise what each section view is representing. I have created a model section head that clearly states it is a model view only and gives the section views name.

Hope this helps,

Lawrence

We held a few 3ds Max drop in sessions last year, these were an opportunity for an informal, 1-2-1 discussion with Autodesk’s guru Jamie Gwilliam. They went down very well with those lucky enough to secure a slot so we’ve decided to hold another on the 11th February at our Enfield office.

So, this is your chance to bag a slot before they all go – I say ‘all’, as they’re 1-2-1, there’s actually only five available, so be quick!

The idea is you can discuss any issues you have with regard to workflows, techniques and best practices. This applies whether you’re an existing user of 3ds Max or Max Design or just interested to see how Max can help your business. It would also be really helpful to bring along some examples of your latest projects on a USB drive.

So don’t be shy, this is a rare opportunity for a free of charge, 1-2-1 discussion, with one of Autodesk’s top 3D gurus! Either contact your Excitech Account Manager or you can register by clicking here!

Paul

The Boolean functionality in 3ds Max can be a little intermittent in some circumstances and can be slightly frustrating as I discovered recently.

Scenario:

I was building up a house from a 2d floor plan in Max and decided to build my rooms using the ‘wall’ tool which worked pretty well with a bit of playing around. But I ran into an issue when I tried to subtract box primitives as a method of creating the openings for my windows/doors/etc. The problem was that when I removed the primitives from the walls the wall would disappear as well as the box primitive I was subtracting away (below).

Proboolean is usually the most reliable and flexible of our two boolean options available in Max. However, in this case we can revert back to the tried and true, old but solid – Boolean tool.
One thing that we have to do when we are using the Boolean tool, as opposed to ‘Proboolean’, is perform each subtraction / union / intersection separately as new boolean objects (perform one boolean operation and then select the Boolean tool again and perform the next). In the Proboolean command we can subtract all 3 boxes within the same Proboolean object, however, the Boolean tool requires us to subtract them all separately or (as our max guru Paul Grimston suggests) we can union the boxes together and then remove them in one subtraction, doing it this way helps minimise the chance that Max will get confused with too many subtractions (two box primitives below were union’d and then subtracted from the walls).

As you can see I had a bit more luck with this than I was having with Proboolean and hopefully if you’re ever presented with a similar problem this will solve the issue.